Last weekend I played in a tournament in Tallahassee, Florida, the town in which I reside. It is mostly known for being Florida’s state capitol and for its two universities, Florida State University and Florida A&M University (my employer). The Chicago Open was in progress, but ironically I was not in my hometown for the big tournament.

The chess community is very small here, but recently local enthusiasts led by Steve Cullifer has been holding regular club meetings and tournaments. The field is not the strongest, but there are several Expert players. This weekend, the tournament had 17 players and several drove from Alabama.

I don’t usually put my games here, but I had a game that I thought was interesting and that may have some educational content. I played Tim Bond who had driven from Alabama to take part. The game was out of an English and had some tense moments. Enjoy!

9 Responses to “One of my weekend games…”

Good evening, Daaim. Congrats on a very good game. It’s amazing that you’ve been able to maintain an expert playing strength even with the PhD rigors interrupting your chess. The USCF website is showing a career high of 2097 after the world open in 1997, I would assume that’s before the PhD took you away from exhaustive chess study. But now you’re still rated over 2000!

Well… I’ve been well into the 2100s. I was first an Expert as a teen and Illinois Jr. Champion once, but you’re right… chess took a back seat. The USCF ratings only go back so far. The Chess Drum takes up most of my chess time now and I don’t study much. Glimmers of talents is still seen somewhere in my games, if you look hard enough. 🙂 All of my games are pretty eventful. Here are a few others:

It started out somewhat balanced and moved on quickly into a delicate positional fight up until he captured on E3. From that point on, it was all-downhill for Bond. But, he definitely put up a tough opposition until he fell for the E3 mousetrap!

Yes… there were some very interesting subtleties in the middlegame. With 44…e3! there are many threats including Qg5+ so he was forced to sack his queen. Black still had to work at the end to avoid counter play with the rolling pawns. After sacking his queen, the best white can do is try to set up a fortress. I remember one sideline I looked at where the black queen couldn’t win against a rook-bishop fortress. I’ll have to find that variation. Of course, I avoided it, but the ending wasn’t as easy as it looks. I was surprised he found moves like 48. Rf5 and 49. Ng2! being in severe time pressure.

I agree that when you have the feeling that you might be better, but you’re not really sure how you’re better, it can be exasperating. But now that the games is over, if you really take a look at the game, it’s clear that white has to struggle after move 45 to complicate matters. It’s not an obvious win, but you made it look that way.